Sundance: 'Call Jane' is worth answering

By Ben Miller

Handsomely filmed and admirably performed, Oscar-nominated Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy makes her feature film directorial debut with Call Jane. Elizabeth Banks stars as Joy, a traditional suburban Chicago housewife in the 1960s. Joy has a loving but busy lawyer husband Will (Chris Messina) and a 14-year-old daughter Charlotte (Grace Edwards). Joy is newly pregnant, and keeps having dizzy spells and passes out in her kitchen. Her doctor diagnoses a congenital heart blockage that threatens her life, unless the pregnancy is terminated - the only treatment...

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Sundance: 'Mars One' is a Brazilian gem!

by Cláudio Alves

Looking over the city she calls home, Tércia lingers and, in turn, the camera lingers on her. It's a beautiful, if humble, image, her silhouette against a celestial painting. The twilight sun makes watercolors out of the skyline, yellow bleeding into blue, gray buildings falling into the cold penumbra. The contemplative frame can contain many meanings, and director Gabriel Martins doesn't force the audience's hand. We're free to surmise what we want from the picture. Speaking from a personal place, I couldn't help but feel a melancholic kinship. Maybe it's projection, but I recognized myself in Tércia, looking at a seemingly peaceful world I thought I knew until it proved me wrong...

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Sundance: Lena Dunham Returns with ‘Sharp Stick’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Director Lena Dunham attends the Q&A at the virtual premiere of Sharp Stick, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. © 2022 Sundance Institute.

It’s been twelve years since Lena Dunham broke through with her second feature film, Tiny Furniture, and just under five years since her Emmy-winning HBO series Girls came to an end. While she’s had a few small film roles since (including Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood) and worked behind the scenes on a trio of series (Genera+ion, Industry, and Camping) she has mostly been out of the media spotlight. Her latest feature, Sharp Stick, absolutely puts her back there. It's an interesting experience, to say the least…

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Sundance: 'Cha Cha Real Smooth' is Frustrating, But Lands On Its Feet

by Eurocheese

Cooper Raiff wrote and directed Cha Cha Real Smooth, in which he stars as Andrew, a conflicted often frustrating man. The first scenes show Andrew in romantic situations at different ages (preteen and just after college), letting the audience know two things about him: he speaks without a filter when it comes to his emotions, and he falls head over heels when he is drawn to someone. When he isn’t romantically entangled, he stays with his loving mother (Leslie Mann) and her boyfriend (Brad Garrett), who he taunts at every opportunity. (At one point, Andrew asks the boyfriend if his purpose on earth is to make things weird… which someone should have been asking him instead!) 

Andrew’s outspoken nature is an excuse to be casually cruel at times though people find him charming. The script relies too heavily on this “charm,” including when he attends a bar mitzvah with his brother and meets Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). It’s clear he feels a spark with Domino right off the bat. The feeling is mutual though he makes remarks that would have most people running away from him... 

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Sundance: Don't Tell #MeToo This Babysitter's Dead

 by Jason Adams

Have you checked on a straight person today? I don't think the straights are doing okay, at least not judging by Babysitter, a Hashtag Me Too themed Quebecois comedy premiering this weekend at Sundance. Dubbed "screwball surrealism" by the filmmakers, which includes leading actress Monia Chokri (who you should recognize from her work with Xavier Dolan) in the director's chair, this movie plays like somebody stuffed a classic French farce into a blender, right down to the wee-wee maid's uniform. It is a lot, too much, and not enough all at once. Tres exhausting!

It all begins with a drunken boys night out at a boxing match. Or at least I think it does...

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